


Start Again

by freelance_writes11



Category: K-pop, Mamamoo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Not K-Pop Idols, Anxious Moonbyul (Mamamoo), Developing Friendships, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family Issues, Female Friendship, Flashbacks, Friendship/Love, Gen, Getting to Know Each Other, Girls' Night Out, Insomniac Wheein (Mamamoo), Inspired by Music, Moving On, My First Work in This Fandom, Post-Break Up, Self-Esteem Issues, Symbolism, mamamoo - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-24
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-02-26 16:14:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 16,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21551080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freelance_writes11/pseuds/freelance_writes11
Summary: Sleepless nights. Beat up conversation. Loud music in the car. Wishing you didn’t care as much as you do.At some point, a person can find themselves in the midst of any of these in one form or another. Why? Because of a break up? Splintered family? Waning self-esteem? Social anxiety?Hyejin, Yongsun, Wheein, and Byul-yi will soon find that even as flowers wither, don’t you worry − they will bloom again.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 31





	1. HYEJIN (Morning)

In the first light of dawn, the sleeping Hong Kong city struggles to wake itself beneath a cloudy morning sky. Puffs of white diffuse the rising daylight to a gentle sweetness while shades of peach and magenta stretch along skylines. Hyejin glares at the invasive colors poking through the blinds, suddenly aware of the coolness of the air and its loamy fragrance.

She slept with the window open again.

“ _Ugh!_ ” She rolls over on untidy sheets, tawny curls from a dye job gone wrong scattering across the pillow as she moves. Her breath smells of Soju and peppermint, and she grows lucky that she has no one to share the grouchy morning start with.

Waking up no longer gives Hyejin the pleasure it once did. She no longer allows a moment for herself to savor the remaining glimpses of a dream, to allow the visions of the night to give way for the anticipation of whatever is to come. She’s up without warning, no sleepiness, no slow warming up, wanting to linger in that blissful ignorance of waking or else never sleeping again.

It’s harsh, especially when her dreams are better than reality.

Hyejin gazes around the unlit room, the tasks of the morning demanding to be thought of and have solutions found, and in doing so steals a glance at her pointless alarm clock. Once 6:30 was a rude awakening, now it’s an impossible target. She just about launches herself out of bed, stumbling over misplaced heels and baggy sweatpants a couple sizes too big to get to the hall bathroom. Her toes instinctively curl into the off-white polyester carpet rather than a standard linoleum flooring. She’s always hated the cold.

Steam fills the room as she cuts the shower on, toes flinching as they touch the chilled ceramic floor when she steps in. The pipes shriek from the amount of pressure and temperature she demands from the ‘Hot’ side, and she braces her muscles to stop from moving out of the magma-like broil before she lathers her head with shampoo and violently scrubs at her scalp.

_Hyejin had no idea why she let him do it to her over and over, each time a new start, a fresh him, a chance to leave the disappointments behind. In her many and varied imaginings of a day of making amends, they had all been alike in one particular way:_

_He’d come to her, fumbling his hands and misty-eyed, and she’d recast her face into one of superiority, erasing the crestfallen expression that belonged to a lovesick little girl, not to a queen._

_She didn’t feel the need to put forth too much effort for the pipe dream, barely hiding her unbrushed hair beneath a flat cap and wearing a lazy sweater piece as she strolled down the streets, hanging over railings and loitering outside shops in search for that familiar face._

_The January air forced her home early – like it had made a difference when someone was three hours late – but when a crisp night came anon and Hyejin found herself against a lamppost in her best dress and heels, makeup every shade of right and her mahogany hair rich in color, she was already aware he’d done it again._

_In the almost deserted city streets, her head reclined high, she removed her earrings swinging in the breeze, and hailed a cab._

Hot water drips off Hyejin’s outstretched fingers, both transparent and opaque at the same time, and fall as if snatched by gravity to the drain below. She still makes no attempt to move and closes her eyes, letting the liquified breath of hell color her skin a raging red, like a carnation caught on fire.

Her heart sinks and her anger flares from the unwanted memories. “Never again,” she vows under her breath.

But she’s said this one too many times before. Does she mean it this time? She hopes so. It’s time to move on from her clichéd love story, as her friends mercilessly kept telling her, “you only have yourself to blame.”

Hyejin’s teeth start to dig into lips once plump with gloss and vibrant with a dimpled smile. Just like that night her head slants backwards, a dull ringing in her ear she wishes to ignore as opposed to the earrings she removed outside, and sweat, steam and water grossly cling to her face, opposite of the ruined makeup she had to wipe clean from her crying in the cab. Shame squeezes her already sensitive heart the longer she stands under the roar of the shower, backtracking to memory lane.

So many times she’s wanted to unsay something she didn’t mean, wanted to shout and throw a tantrum, wanted to vent and let it all out. Ever since she could remember, she’s been adept at hiding her broken insides when so many people demanded the free and easy version of her, the one with the instant smiles and all the right things to say. Yet she couldn’t have the good – happiness, pride, excitement, relief – without the bad, the hurt, the pain or despair.

 _It’s just so easy to be cruel in that moment_ , Hyejin believes, concealing her tired eyes with dark shades as her mind shifts to autopilot the second her foot hits the shortcut to work, _and then the damage is done._

The trick was to balance those emotions so the bad didn’t seem so terrible, and so the poor girl could truly appreciate the good on her own time. The sidewalks are badly slick from a late night rain, the day promises to be good like every other, and Hyejin…

She’s learning how to deal with her post-breakup, but slowly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! This is inspired by Mamamoo's MV "Wind Flower" and I've decided to piece together each girl's individual scenes and clump it into a collective story line. Rather than focusing on the "going through/getting over a breakup" stage for all four, I've written the heartbroken stage for Hwasa and will be giving Solar, Wheein, and Moonbyul their own unique struggles and troubles that can be perceived as a bitter breakup, but not quite.
> 
> I'm going to follow the order of appearances from the video − Hwasa, Solar, Wheein, Moonbyul − and publish a separate morning, afternoon, and night chapter in each girl's POV before ending it with them all together.
> 
> I hope you like what I've got so far, and feel free to leave feedback of what you think! ❤


	2. YONGSUN (Morning)

Yongsun wouldn’t say she was classically beautiful, but her brunet monolid eyes surrounded by the right signature eyeliner held a bouncing virtue and charm that was impossible for guys not to be held prisoner by them. She didn’t think her face was anything extraordinary or significant, and yet people were magnetically drawn to those serious and silent features when it showed an undeniable symmetry threaded in the scarlet of rogue or glittering eye shadow.

The proverb goes “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”, and in Yongsun’s case it was true of anyone she had ever met. Gazes were held seconds longer than others’ as their brains registered, strangers stared when they thought she was unaware. At school she was popular without trying, and even her teachers seemed to favor her over her peers.

Some said all of that inflated her ego in every way, birthing a prickly arrogance about her.

Talk of how Yongsun was so disarmingly unaware of her prettiness and that that’s why her skin glowed severely clashed with the superiority complex others berated her for, in which it had given her such an ugly attitude she made no attempt to conceal. Some said she was blessed with incredible beauty, others said she was egotistically cursed.

But Yongsun didn’t view her body, mannerisms or personality in the same way others viewed her. Or perhaps she did and just didn’t realize it. Anything she did and all the attention she received seemed to be negative.

If she could turn heads with cherry red stilettos and tight-fitting jeans in a bar any Saturday night, she was a hussy. Her scrawny figure in an oversized men’s sweatshirt − underneath a denim shirt from Goodwill with a pair of jeans ripped from overuse − inclined people to tell her it was okay to treat herself better. When she hid imperfections under confidence in a tube, glamor out a bottle, value on a palette, she was chastised for needing to rejoin humanity someday because of the “mask” she wore.

Even with all the pieces roughly glued together, Yongsun has yet to find out which is her real face.

The bus rocks from side to side as it travels the familiar roads leaving the city. Far, far in the back Yongsun sits and stares out the window, eyes bleary and reactions slow, her restlessness greeting the horizon that will soon be erased on arrival when she can return to another world.

There’s a feeling in her stomach, a soft mixture between nausea and an electric tingling, as the wheels go over the same turns and bumps. Her head starts to buzz and her heart rate shoots up, an impish glee taking over as if she’s running away. Perhaps that’s it; today she’ll do it. She flirts with the notion of being at peace with quiet birdsong and sleeping on a great quilt of golden, brown and green squares.

She could do that. Keep tabs from afar on the city, impress passerby by saying something good about nature. It wasn’t that Yongsun had always sought isolation, but she felt uncomfortable in a crowded room. Besides, the countryside loved her in ways no person ever had.

The bus curves down a twisting road, the faint expanses of green and a notable frisson of joy looming much too out of reach. The silver vehicle chugs to a stop and emits a bit of exhaust in time to Yongsun’s sigh.

To the unaccustomed eye, the outskirts of the city were beautiful swathes of rolling greens, tumbling yellows, and grainy grays, picturesque by any standards. But to Yongsun, it was just a pitiful attempt to make the streets brighter and attract tourists. She had to admit, though, that she’s never noticed the sparse honey-colored trees close by or the tight-budded blossoms freckling along the pavement – even if the illusion got ruined by power lines and high rises in the background.

Yongsun delicately plucks a bunch of flowers and holds them up, the sunlight painting her face refreshingly with their silhouettes. Each stem is the color of spring grass and is topped with brilliant violet, faint white, and pale pink petals so thin and tiny even the plumes of smoke could shine through them.

 _How is it that in all the chaos of the city_ , she wonders, _these pretty things still survive?_

The smile playing at the corners of Yongsun’s mouth since she first spotted the colors, however, fades the longer she admires.

_A phone held a thousand memories. Not just in the photos that could weave a story, but in the text messages and the ones Yongsun never sent; in the games she played to pass the time secretly waiting to hear from him; in the way her ear pressed against the glass just to hear his voice._

_She once saw relationships as a form of war or like a game of chess, never playing the right way and not loving as others did. When he came to her, he saw what she needed. He reached through with sappy e-mails, telling her over the phone that those who harmed her character were wrong and that she had his love freely given._

_A phone remembered it all. But most importantly, it remembered the silence it had to endure between people._

_Yongsun had eagerly awaited his presence outside the performance hall for their first official meetup in eight years, having done herself up in a creamy silk dress but wanting to hide it beneath a rather fitted dress coat (gloves and everything) to surprise him later on. Everything, from her styled hair to her light makeup, tied her whole outfit together and she felt genuinely… Beautiful._

_So she waited. 6:02, 6:10, 6:30, 6:55._

_The old phone outside the hall rang incessantly, and between the hesitant moments she finally decided to answer it down to the slap-in-the-face end of the call, Yongsun realized she’d misinterpreted all of his actions and conversations for so many years. Blushing carnations would soon audaciously be sent to her front porch and camp out on her dining table, their once alluring petals soon to curl at the edges from negligence._

The current flowers in Yongsun’s hand are a living corpse; without its roots, its vibrancy would fade. It’s been four months since she’s gone for a girl’s night out, or seen another person she recognized and had coffee with them. In that period of solitude and scavenging for whatever she could find left of her rattled conscience, it was really lonely and she only had a hard time.

As she drops the blossoms back into their cluster, she recognizes how she too is rootless − cut off from the world’s support, from the light of day.

From the guy she thought had been her best friend since the day he saved her from herself.


	3. WHEEIN (Morning)

_Drowsy_. That’s what the label warns Wheein to expect. Minutes after the pill is down her throat, her focus sways between a light consciousness and a promising heavy rest. She’s always thought of drowsy as a soft word like ‘blanket’ or ‘hug,’ but as she drifts into the hope of a brand-new dream, ‘sheet’ seems like the more appropriate word.

Wheein could almost never sleep when tired. Whenever she sensed the exhaustion burrowing deep in her chest, noticed how she breathed languidly and how her thoughts dragged by in slow motion, she’d give anything to curl up in her pajamas in bed come the late hours. On good days she’d get at least three hours, on bad days two figures. In minutes.

She hated her insomnia; it haunted her nights while fatigue ruled her days. She found it ridiculous to need sleeping pills for just a quick nap, and even then her mind lit up with new possibilities and dangers, her conscience telling her what could go wrong tomorrow because of some avoidable screw up she’d made that day.

And Wheein would wake as soon sleep came, knowing with a sinking heart it was time to get up, do something, and keep moving.

Eleven p.m. transitions to twelve and then one, but to see a time before two a.m. is enough to send the girl’s pulse racing and undo the calming effect the chalky placebo promised. The soft music she had put on finished a while ago, and her bedroom is a blur of random images floating aimlessly in the lazy pool of her thoughts.

Wheein tries keeping her eyes open, but the after effects make her so unbelievably disoriented that after five minutes of lolling her head around, she has no recollection of falling back asleep and wakes with a start. The dark red-orange of her lamp blinds her, worsening her drunk-like stupor and making her slightly lightheaded, so she closes her eyes one more time to enjoy the brief darkness. Fingers sink through wild and short hair to massage her scalp, the touch of a thin fringe guiding her down memory lane. As heavily angst as it sounds, the haircut had been an act of defiance against her parents.

_Wheein wasn’t a child anymore and didn’t want to hold onto her abrasive father’s words, nor did she want her high-strung mom influencing her life. Their dissimilarities drove her up the wall and she was determined to be as different from them as possible. One November three years ago, Wheein had swiped her credit card and traded her long brunette locks for a dyed blonde bob. It was several inches shorter than she’d hoped for and every so often she felt a draft on her neck where there should have been hair. But she liked it, and that was all that mattered._

_Her mother quickly learnt not to pressure too many arguments on her or try and bond on the same issues, each attempt driving her daughter to more and more introverted extremes – staying in her room until dinnertime or taking the car out for agonizingly long drives, for example._

_Wheein’s mother may have learned not to shake her out of the lonesome hobbies, but her father’s rules were in an entirely separate book. He had the resounding presence of a tiger and never hesitated to show it in mental and physical flurries._

_Whisky. The man would be more intimidating sharing his eye color with the hard liquor. Wheein would have greatly preferred being the empty glass and slammed against just one wooden surface, not eight various ones around the house. The same acid smell permeated her nose, the foul taste was sampled on her lips when she felt a splash rudely thrown her way, and the same burn drowning her father’s throat when he spit venom and barked obscenities made her heart bleed._

Wheein’s father had hurt her in every way possible, and when he skipped out of her and her mom’s lives, insomnia became the companion that refused to leave. Heartache followed the bitter separation, and to this day Wheein knows she and her mother still share the same thought: Why couldn’t I treat you better when I was with you?

Like the whisky that turned the man upside down, he was definite, strong, and his sentiment was often difficult to find, but he always had Wheein and her mother coming back. He had a bittersweet way of expressing himself and was sometimes crude and disconcerting, yet in an odd way they were balanced by habits of being compassionate and attentive.

 _Why are sweet words starting to linger now?_ Wheein’s mind scoffs.

Time now takes on several different forms for her, more plentiful than it ever was, giving her deeper and quieter moments to wonder when the preferred sleep would be kinder. Her mind is blank when it should be dreaming, and her eyes are stationary like the silhouette of her lamp.

She studies its details for a moment, making shadow puppets to alleviate her boredom and switching the light on and off multiple times until she decides to just leave it on to avoid any more dizziness. The lamp is still the focused subject of the room, this time its glow beneath the lampshade is studied, before Wheein’s shifting on the bed has her back against the wall and her hands returning to her hair.

A book that’s been read thirty-nine times is read for the fortieth, poor lay downs for cat naps are attempted, and her school of yellow and red fish get a full view of her wistful face when she camps beside the bright and pretty tank, imagining life as a fish with rainbow scales and no cares. The street lights outside the window fade faster than expected, and the muffled sounds of traffic and early construction rise along with the sun.

Wheein’s morning has officially started, but as per usual her nights have never truly ended.


	4. BYUL-YI (Morning)

Once Hong Kong’s cityscape had been alien to Byul-yi and its bustling activity set her on edge. Things were constantly changing; downtown could flicker from affluence to slight poverty and straight into rush hour in the blink of an eye. Up and down the streets lay bright marketplaces with smooth black glass exteriors and foreign names in fancy lettering, then a slope further down revealed dingy pawn shops, liquor stores, and strip clubs.

But once she got used to the urban pace changing every five minutes no matter where she was coming from, everything gradually became the senses of home and she grew to love it more and more.

Apartments and banks tower over the morning rush as Byul-yi moves along thick crowds out of the subway, unable to see any shop signs or landmarks to orient her − only backpacks, coats and hair. She ignores the frequent jostling or nasty remarks from those who knew no patience, and as soon as there’s natural light and the smell of caffeine replaces the heavy tang of gasoline, she turns a sharp right.

A flood of growth explodes on the sides of the street, from scattered antique and art stalls to packed diners and vintage storefronts, and so many pigeons outnumber the pavement that Byul-yi has to walk on tiptoe to avoid kicking them. The birds aren’t afraid of her, but she’s more scared they’ll foul up the shoes she bought last week.

A few minutes later her efforts are rewarded by being able to jog across the busy crosswalks, slip into the shadows under the many metal zigzags of fire escapes, and climb a singular red and rusted ladder to her personal sanctuary. The rooftop spreads in every direction to offer the best view, and it’s from up here, like standing on a giant’s back, that Byul-yi sees what a maze Quarry Bay is.

Everything flows in a nonstop manner; cars, people, busses and the monorail. Dark colors rush along the streets, its grid pattern almost as if someone had drunkenly laid it out, and never ending streams of traffic flicker under reds, yellows, and greens in curvy threads below the sun. Bulky and eclipsed buildings collide in a mixture of shadow and geometry, competing for dominance in height, public taste, and function, and every other afternoon trucks brought in wares from neighboring cities, interrupting and often blocking off vehicles on the already narrow roads.

Up here it’s like looking down at the world, and Byul-yi wouldn’t trade the anonymity for anything. The city spreads further and further apart, and it suddenly feels so wide and welcoming and free.

Does she deserve it?

_On her 16th birthday, Byul treated herself to see the sun rise over the ocean for the first time. The cold wasn’t as bad as she thought it would be in December at seven a.m. when she arrived at the beach. There, she watched the pale colors start to melt in line perfectly, gasped as a pearly morning haze heightened into view, and smiled wider than she thought was capable as the pure white light of the sun bid her a good morning over the horizon._

_It wasn’t anything like in the films she’d seen or how the books she read described it to be. Nothing ‘poured out brilliant hot oranges and reds into the clouds’, there were no ‘colors of amber and rose’ waiting to kiss the top of her head and bring ‘passion to her soul.’_

_It started out subtle, almost like it was afraid to rise, and the payoff had been incredibly worth it._

_That was all Byul-yi planned to do when something else colorful caught her attention. Three others, one girl and two guys, were on the beach too. The girl sat between the pair, the shortest and thinnest of them smoking a blunt, while the taller of the two guys laid back scanning the water and laughing at whatever his guy friend said in his ear. Each of them looked too skinny to be full grown adults and had an amazing sense of surety in themselves._

_Their brash chatter and the way they laughed and swore loudly was a kind of behavior Byul-yi would normally be scared off from._ _So why hadn’t she?_

Byul-yi shivers in the early morning chill, her shoulders curled in towards her chest to savor some body heat, and squints out in the poor light. She and that trio had their share of fun. They enjoyed the group’s banter and their witty and not so witty put-downs on one another − mostly on sensitive little Byul, but she figured it was their way of warming up to her.

They went out to dance clubs and had midnight corner store raids every other weekend, not always paying the full price for something, but they promised to cover the entire expense next time. Sensible talk never lasted no matter how hard Byul-yi tried, and the hilarity started right back up again in between drags and shots.

Her fingers tremble when they lock with one another, holding herself together the more she recalls particular memories and events with that wild crew. She was a joke when she joined in on their ill choices and a pussy if she didn’t. If she didn’t know how to choose or what she wanted, there were two options prepared and the choice was up to her:

Yes she would stick around and stop being such a little bitch, or yes she was lame and needed to go home to Mommy and Daddy.

Byul-yi’s brain wasn’t as brave as she thought it to be among so many people, and a little voice prodded and hissed how she wasn’t good enough to be in their presence in the first place. At one point, she physically felt a lingering attachment whenever she put her best foot forward and gave in to their demands, wondering if they saw past the laidback swagger and coy grins and instead noticed the real her.

Moon Byul-yi, the sensitive girl who only wanted to be with those who loved her the way family did, to be active in a crowd of friends rather than in a crowd.

Now she isn’t sure of what she wants anymore. Every day she conflicts with feeling like she’s being greedy and sometimes unworthy to be able to engage in something the tiniest bit grand – like viewing her city under cooling sunlight, or bonding with the most wonderful person at the bookstore. Anything that so much as promises a good and easy time in her life intertwines in a heart-stirring, pleasing, almost frightening mess of a dream.

A dream that makes Byul-yi’s conscience snap at her that it’s false and a waste of time to enjoy ever again by how long she’s spent being peer pressured into sloppy and filthy decisions, and that she’s better off riding solo.

She never would’ve had to break up with her social life if she had stayed home on her birthday.


	5. HYEJIN (Afternoon)

Hyejin draws in a breath of the late fall air, detecting the first chill of the season to come. She lets a smile creep on under the blinding light of the November afternoon, the ground sending up disorientating hazes and a brisk wind coiling around her like the coldblooded snake it is. She keeps a steady pace on the rarity of an empty sidewalk and lowers the shades she previously had to discard at the salon, enjoying the feel of taking back those rare pairs of charcoal to be her own.

Hyejin wishes she had skipped work today.

She’s employed to make men and women look beautiful on the outside and let it feed into their insides. She makes a living off of stingy tips consumed around the wide open space of mirrors and leather seats, forced every morning at 6:30 to breath in the same perfumed air and buoyant atmosphere of chatter. She’s plagued and paid by pastel hair, dark clothes, dark hair, darker clothes, judging people who judge people but wishing she didn’t care as much as they did.

Hyejin would much rather have seven cups of coffee in the morning or greasy food in the middle of the night than have the whole private life of Hong Kong swarm the salon, often in noisy exchanges with friends, flashing their credit cards and taking the hard work of the stylists for granted. She’s never set foot in cosmetology school and often got hang nails and atrocious hat hair on her ‘best’ days, but it was a casual and normal living.

“A more enjoyable job than working in some office,” she mutters, soon spotting a bright and gaudy sun surrounded by a sea of blue flowers.

The Little Yellow Coffeehouse − rightfully named so in accordance to its ridiculous sunny paint job − is Hyejin’s refuge. Among the noises of people, their scent, their occasional glances and the chatter of the baristas, she gives her palate a little of what it craves each week. The coffee, music and smiles of those who care is a fragment of heaven, a chance to enjoy company and want more of it.

“Can I have one large iced chocolate?” Hyejin asks in the limited Cantonese she knows, credit card already pinched between her fingertips while the girl carefully taps in the order.

_On the other side of the doors was warmth and soft jazz. The windows provided an unbroken patch of cloudy light in the late morning, a simple pre-dawn on the quaint city street as two awkward lovers’ knees almost touched under the table. All around them half a dozen customers talked loud and louder, competing with one another to be heard._

_His usual steady gaze flickered from Hyejin to the large slush of diabetes he’d been urged to try. “What is this?”_

_“Iced chocolate.”_

_“Why did you add whipped cream? It gets all over your face.”_

_Hyejin removed her elbows from the table and sat a little straighter. “They gave it to me like this.”_

_“You should’ve asked them to take it out.”_

_“Aish, I didn’t know. Just have it. You’re so picky.”_

_But he drank the whole thing_ , Hyejin’s present thoughts unnecessarily remind her.

Her throat suddenly feels sore and she wipes at her temples, perspiration residue forming a shiny patch on her sweater sleeve. She squeezes her eyes shut while the rest of the world becomes detached, and all she can concentrate on is the toothache in her brain right between her eyes, rooted deep in her head. She can barely make out the people, visual disturbances floating around her in that moment, and she begins to wonder when was the last time she ate.

“Or…an…jin.”

The baritone of a voice wraps around Hyejin, and she flushes lightly when she realizes that the barista is waiting for her to retrieve her order.

“I’m sorry,” she squeaks, and the chuckle that replies is soft and understanding. “Thank you. Don’t work too hard.”

Hyejin steps out into a suddenly shockingly humid afternoon, or it could be just the heat from inside catching up to her. She disregards any reason to find and gulps down streams of the chocolatey beverage, the numbing burn feeling like the greatest luxury on earth. Anything to put out the fire in her cheeks is honestly the greatest luxury on earth.

She absentmindedly takes a seat at one of the outdoor café tables, each with a fancily done up red sun umbrella. The view is hardly fantastic; had she been in front of an Italian vista, she could sit and stare for hours, maybe even days. But instead The Little Yellow Coffeehouse lies less than four feet from one of the busiest roads in the city. Hyejin can never enjoy the heat of a good coffee without choking on fumes that go by almost without break.

She trails beside the traffic step by step, eyes wandering over flickering silvers and blues and oranges, ears faintly ringing at taxicab horns and Cantonese profanity. She sees the windows on skyscrapers reflect the glow of the afternoon sun and smells samosas down the block, wishing she could stop to buy some for lunch and some to take home, but she can’t see the cart and her break ended seventeen minutes ago.

Hyejin’s coffee is drained by the time she returns to the salon, and she takes the ice between her teeth and bites hard at the sight of her squinty-eyed boss. She trashes the outside drink and goes to work with her understandably pissed client to trim her bangs and pile great curls on top of her head, being ever so grateful she never bothered to grasp fluency in the language as the woman heatedly gives her what for. If there hadn’t been a mirror in front of her, Hyejin would have rolled her eyes until she saw stars.

“Ahn, these came for you.”

Hyejin lazily glances over her shoulder at one of her coworkers and does a double take, her eyes freezing over like the surface of a winter puddle. An expensive bouquet − trimmed, frilly bowed, posh and everything − is in the employee’s hands. They’re her favorite too, miniature red sunflowers, and their transitory beauty mocks her as her gaze burns through the single purple card attached scrawled in handwritten Hangul:

“ _How many times has it been just regretting it? This breakup happened long ago, and that’s why we’ve been so lonely._ ”

Hyejin takes on a pale look as if she had been painted with white-wash, jaw slack and nostrils flaring. Then with one step backwards, she abandons her customer mid-curl and storms for the door. She could care less about getting an earful from the woman in the chair, she doesn’t give a damn about her boss shouting after, and she definitely doesn’t give two shits where she’s headed.

Anywhere away from those blistering memories will be the _greatest_ luxury on earth.

Hyejin finds herself wandering the maze of a neglected parking garage. She sits at the very far end of the lot, back against the damp slate of the wall, body aching and cheeks burning with the flush of a feverish anger. Her breath quivers in short, quick gasps every time she inhales, her lungs having no choice but to painfully take in the musky air of lingering exhaust and concrete. She can’t stop shaking.

“Stop it, stop.” She roughly rubs at her elbows in an attempt to cease the unsettling chill running down her spine and slides down the wall, letting the silence deafen her. “You’re better than this, _stop_.”

Hyejin’s mind swirls and fades into dullness, everything a foggy illusion like she’s standing under an everlasting waterfall. Ever so beautiful, but it can never last.

She knows best from experience.


	6. YONGSUN (Afternoon)

Yongsun believed in reincarnation, and if she could come back as anyone or anything, she would want to be a jasmine flower. They both laughed and danced when the wind blew, showering the atmosphere and fields with their liveliness. There was nothing more perfect to her than the five white petals with a sunshine yellow middle. She found their sights and smells drug-like. Her brain always buzzed, happy and serene, but she couldn’t afford them and refused to buy the plastic or silk imitations sold in supermarkets.

Nothing was as magical to her as the real flower.

Morning had since transitioned into the kind of afternoon where the grass stood straight, the leaves dangled more as if they had been painted on, and birdsong came so sweetly you’d have thought they were spun in sugar. The breeze, although chilled, carries the lakeside air over to Yongsun who can only view the luxury addition from a distance. She longs to escape the traffic and frenetic movement of people, but the formal garden has its small fee for tourists and locals alike. It’s especially ripe today with the rainbow freckles of wild flowers, and their sickeningly sweet smells hurt her nose, making her all the more angry that she can’t have a closer look.

All she can do is pretend she sees the beautiful white and magenta lily pads in bloom on the wind-ruffed surface of the natural basin. Yongsun dares to take one step closer, inhaling slowly as she comes into a warm haze where the bees work in their meditative buzz of togetherness. A different patch of flowers catch her eye, and while they may not be her ultimate favorite, they don’t fail to make her smile.

Yongsun crouches down, careful not to disrupt the black-and-yellow stingers, and caresses a handful of buttery bold blooms of Julia Child roses. No sooner does she do this than hidden thorns scuff up her palms.

_A sudden gush of hurt jolted throughout Yongsun’s body, her stomach aching and legs lost in tension. The flowers still lay on the table, their stalks limp when she picked at them. She leaned forward while her arms tightened around a thinning rib cage, shivering in the chill of her kitchen in front of those eyes she would have killed for to see in person. Not on a monitor._

_“Flowers. You got me flowers of all things. Why?”_

_Much like the carnations had done days ago, the man brought in a cool blaze to the late summer night. “Because I thought you would like them.”_

_“I wanted to see you, not three flowers in a vase.”_

_“It was a bouquet. It had more than three and I spent hours finding the best ones for you.”_

_“The best **one** for me was you and you didn’t bother at all!”_

_The argument was cold, every word over pronounced and slicing through the air in a great hurry. Something had been distorted into a close mimicry of hatred, forming a wall of bitterness that further separated the two and grew more thorns every day._

_There were no tears on Yongsun’s face. His eyes were narrowed, cold and hard. In that moment, she knew he was already far away. The blue eyes she had fallen for were no more than dirty ice._

Thick scarlet threads around Yongsun’s skin, staining and recoloring the Julia Childs, and she tries to swallow the anger while it’s still a fiery seed, knowing she let it grow that day until it spiraled into a wildfire…

And burnt the person she cherished most.

Yongsun would never forget his eyes and how that fire burnt him. He loved the girl’s sparks of passion and the way she sizzled even in the rain, but her inferno was more than his heart could manage.

A clock somewhere ticks to a new hour for the seventh time while laughable-sized raindrops splat on Yongsun’s hair. She’s long since reoccupied downtown and currently strolls the edge of the street where lampposts droop and you can’t flag down a taxi, where there is no softening of the November chill, and the starting night service is without a smile. The city’s black overcoat descends to the horizon while everything once monochrome glints and glares under a shimmer of moon-reflecting light.

Hong Kong’s now indigo-scrubbed evening strains Yongsun’s mind, and her breath fogs up in front of her thicker than a smoke cloud. She wants nothing more than to retreat to her apartment, take a nap and have some tea, then, when she could compose enough thought to move again, she’d let the nightlife influence her in its contagious ways.

She hails a cab and mumbles her address to the driver, exhaling frigid air out of her lungs in time to slamming the door closed, as if she had just finished a marathon. It’s past eight as the taxi joins traffic, rocking Yongsun in place, and when the yellow thing cruises down the shining and stunted boulevard, a funny feeling comes to her. Not excitement to see the nocturnal activity, though at first it appears that way. It’s more like relief of moving again mixed with a strange anxiety of not knowing how things’ll turn out on her way home.

Is traffic too heavy? Will she be able to fall asleep tonight? How long has it been since she’s restocked her fridge?

The strange anxiety feel turns genuine when the cab harshly brakes to avoid hitting someone. A string of profane babbles out the driver’s mouth while Yongsun rolls the window down. A lanky brunette in a barely-together jacket and Buffy the Vampire Slayer printed T-shirt violently stumbles backwards, pupils dilated from the scare yet she makes no attempt to move or apologize.

This aggravates the driver, making him shout louder and frantically wave his arm in a _get out the way_ gesture. Yongsun sees the stranger’s body language is similar to the kind of panic a lost child in the city would have, and something flashes beneath the surface of her skittish expression before she hurries to the left in a sudden and odd shift of her body.

Yongsun feels her heart beat so strong she thinks her chest will burst, and the hairs on her arms stand to attention. _Is there something familiar about this girl_ , she thinks as the cab's engine rumbles back to life, _or is it just my imagination?_

Like reaching desperately for an escaped balloon, Yongsun startles the driver by shouting her request for him to stop a second time. She leans her head back out the window, noticing the bleary outline of the slow moving girl still in the distance.

The way her figure staggers amps up the pulse in her neck, and with another shaky exhale out her nose, Yongsun calls out to her fellow Korean sister, “Do you need a ride?”


	7. WHEEIN (Afternoon)

Despite how long she’d been away, Wheein remembers everything about her “childhood” home. Though she was born in South Korea, her father and mother had had some kind of business and platonic connections respectively around the boroughs of Hong Kong and always took her to join them on holidays.

There was one specific cottage her mother had saved up for that refused to leave her memories. It crouched low on the outskirts of the grassy highlands as though it was trying to be as close to the mountain ridges as possible. Even through the dark the roof was too large to go unnoticed, and little Wheein could always spot its stone walls and point out their occasional flash of color − some blues, others green or brown − that would emerge from the gray.

Her mother told her they were fairy eyes trying to steal a glimpse of the world, and at that age Wheein was convinced she saw (and still sees) the real magic of Hong Kong’s undervalued countryside because of her mother.

Of course her father couldn’t see it and craved to take advantage of the urban hub, seeking a permanent residency for the family right after Wheein’s graduation from high school. His subsequent quit on his family got him rarely leaving the city, and Wheein and her mother left for the tiny cottage that could offer only so much beauty and nostalgia until Wheein’s head snapped and she had to leave for the city, too.

Not in the same footsteps as her father, but as a way to distract herself from the overwhelming sentiment under a single roof with her now single parent. She had to have people screaming or horns honking in her ears instead of the soft clinking around in the kitchen when she knew her mother wanted to make her something special to eat. She had to smell the unapologetically urban cityscape instead of the nearby mountain air and gardens lest she want to tumble down memory lane and spend hours stressing about what could have been.

Wheein felt she didn’t deserve it, and her mother was slowly but surely powering through without her spouse. She had to take care of herself more and not her twenty-something-year-old insomniac of a daughter.

Yet now, staring at the bungalow hunkering down in the clearing, it looks more alive and welcoming than ever beneath the low afternoon sunshine. A thin smokey trail curls from the chimney; white hydrangeas in pots and the soft tinkling of wind chimes take Wheein back to blissful afternoons; and the walls have faded since she last saw them, taking on the color of the sky before a bad storm, but she recognizes it all.

Home.

She trudges toward the door, a duffel bag thumping at the back of her thighs, and raises a hesitant hand to knock.

_The flowers had been sent to her mother without a label, a card, anything to help her find the sender. It wasn’t her birthday and she didn’t have a boyfriend, and to make matters stranger, they were all Wheein’s favorites: yellow buttercups, purple bellflowers, and orange azaleas._

_A transitory evocation of holidays and laughter and **life** came to her when her mother innocently sent them over, asking if she had a clue if such tenacious blossoms belonged to her instead. This provoked everything − raw tears, raw emotions, raw screaming and shouting, and Wheein thought to herself, “Why can’t I stop crying?”_

_Her head was not like what it was, and to have something thrust into her arms with an unconvincing bow of “love” turned sharp and deadly than courtesy allowed._

_“You want to come back but you don’t know how.” Her voice marinated with suppressed rage in the unfamiliar doorway. “You want me here because you need my help, but I don’t care anymore. It’s just a matter of whether my mother will invite you back into her life or not. I know I never will.”_

_Everything about her father added fuel to the already raging fire burning Wheein’s mentality. She didn’t know what had happened or what had been said in that apartment, but her knuckles were black and blue, she was pushed away from the man she thought she knew, and his nose was a bloody mess, smashed right in his face._

_As for the “selfless gift”, it found its fate slammed into a fence, cutting up the petals into jagged ugly lines until all that remained was Wheein’s lost dignity._

The woman in front of Wheein is showering her only child in absent love and praise, and she feels it should warm her heart, but there’s a part of her that just doesn’t know. She left just like he did, so why should she get different treatment?

“Please never feel like a burden on me. Your heart and mind are too good for this upside down world to be broken, my spring star. I want you to be _happy_ , Wheein, that’s all a mother ever wants. Even if you wither, I want you to bloom brightly and paint the sky with your vivid colors.”

Wheein’s out of breath when she hears the one voice she longed to soothe her ever since she found her own four walls of a home in the confusing city. She tries to speak, but every attempt to do so causes a wheezing air to escape the back of her throat. Whatever emotion she brought with her evaporates instantly when she and her mother’s eyes meet, and a choked sob shatters the air that makes the older woman embrace her daughter in a tight hug.

“Why couldn’t it be more beautiful when we were together?” Wheein murmurs tearfully. “It hurts Mom, it _hurts_.”

Standing there, being consoled in the warm arms of someone who truly cares, she’s suddenly unsure why she hadn’t returned in so long.


	8. BYUL-YI (Afternoon)

Lonely and alone are two very different things. In the gloom of the café, Byul-yi eats her food alone like she’s convinced its been poisoned, each bite tinier than what you would feed a baby. It reminds her of the many night clubs, convenience stores, and bars she and her ex-posse thundered to on hot summer nights, the bolder three teens out of the four eagerly flashing fake IDs and getting high off of the adrenaline, not just drugs. She was really lonely with those people who were supposed to be loyal, nice, and loving to her more than any other.

Then, later on when she severed her social life with an anxiety-edged knife, lonely and alone mixed into a disgusting broth.

Byul-yi once heard some advice floating around that if you embraced the feeling of loneliness, let yourself feel the pain full force and have the courage to stand and keep going, you were ready for the company of others. She wanted to give both middle fingers and actually spit on whoever she heard preaching that nonsense. Yes she is currently lonely, but she has herself. She also has the café, a place where she can think undisturbed, take a breath when she’s suffocating, and make believe that she’s in a caring society.

 _Nobody can hurt you here_ , Byul’s conscience consoles as she nibbles along the chopsticks, pausing before taking any more and careful not to let anything touch her lips. She gives the rain lashing against the dirty window panes a wistful glance, wishing the sun would return for the city.

_Through the dark room exploded explicit lyrics and the shouts of rowdy patrons, and it would be hours before her friends stopped demanding another shot and remembered she existed. Smoke entangled with the musty scents of sweat, heated romance and hard liquor, and Byul-yi felt her throat dry up faster than the summer-baked sidewalks. After the heat of the day, it wasn’t surprising to have a need for a large drink, but not if she had to endure an overheated room, terrible music, and MIA friends._

_Besides, the drunker her party got, the higher they were at risk of being discovered for underaged drinking and false identification._

_“Hey, it’s getting a little lame in here.” Byul-yi attempted to sound unbothered and bored, but her fidgeting hands were a dead giveaway of her discomfort. “There’s other joints we can hit up. We don’t have to waste our time here.”_

_“Other joints we can hit up? Who is this kid? The hell are we, 1930s babies?”_

_“So sorry this place doesn’t serve cookies and chocolate milk for you, Moon- **bum**. Next time, BYOB.”_

_“See, this is why you need to get out more girl! You’re so closeted, it’s embarrassing. How can you expect to live a little if you won’t start living tonight?”_

_All three different tones told her three different things, but all meant relatively the same one twisted point of theirs: go big or go home._

_No sooner did Byul-yi force back tears than the harsh scent of drink stain her person. She was beyond drunk and feeling sorry for herself. She knew it, and so did her_ _“friends” who cracked themselves up about how stupid she was or that she couldn’t hold her liquor and that she just had to go out with them to another bar soon. No matter how many steps the poor girl took, Byul-yi was no closer to where she wanted to be._

Byul-yi crunches another handful of crispy shrimp, the oil-soaked seafood sitting like a rock in the pit of her stomach. The noodles are too thick to chew with her mouth closed, the coldness of the tiled booth uncomfortably seeps through her jeans, and an out of nowhere dull pain just on one side of her temple starts flickering on and off like a busted bulb.

Now she really, _really_ needs a drink like her sanity depends on it, and she knows this is dangerous and stupid when her emotions are scrambling to get to the top and see which one can break free first. Common sense? Self pity? Impassiveness? Nerves?

A clock somewhere inside a restaurant ticks to a new hour, and Byul-yi feels a late raindrop splat on her ashen skin followed by several others scattering to catch up, but she doesn’t have the heart to return to the bar. She had promised the concerned bartender she would stop after only four small drinks and catch a cab back home, and of course she meant it. She may be of age now, but she was still a lightweight and couldn’t afford the risks of getting blackout drunk.

Byul-yi inches along the edge of the streets where lampposts droop and you can’t flag down a taxi, where there is no softening of the November chill, and the starting night service is without a smile. The moon hangs in a smug, crooked grin atop a mauve-and-pink tint while the first visible star of a humid, hazy night lazily glows in the direction she’s going.

“Beautiful,” she mumbles around the numbing aftertaste of the drinks. “Why so many buildings? Why? I want to see my sunset.”

 _But you can’t and you know why you can’t_ , something inside her hisses, and she turns the volume up to hear it. _Sunsets like this were perfect on Jeju Island, but you’re far from Korea. Why’d you think this little vacation would help you if you know you can’t get joy from it? Are you that stupid? You have no friends to enjoy it with, no boyfriend, no family here…_

Whenever that type of attack struck, poor Byul was its prisoner indefinitely, helpless in its cage of pain and degrading angst. Often the rampant emotions would overwhelm her to the point of migraines or throwing up from nausea, and her head would throb so violently that she wondered why her skull didn’t just crack open.

“Why is everything irritating?” The pain-stricken girl growls under her breath, eyelids veiling her vision and an exhausted sigh causing her breath to fog up.

Blinding flashes of color force themselves past Byul-yi’s closed eyes, and at the last second she jumps and almost screams when a taxi had been mere inches from hitting her. She is fleetingly aware of her carelessness and wants to curse herself out, but she presumes the driver, spitting with fury, is two steps ahead of her. Byul-yi stands there shaking, spots in the corners of her vision popping up and making her head feel like the only thing inside was static, and it doesn’t help when the driver starts swinging his arm to make her move.

She senses she’s about to cry, so with a barely-there apologetic bow of the head, she shuffles awkwardly to the left and carries on with her night, tears scolding her already spooked and burning face. _No more drinks, no more. You should’ve just gotten a taxi. You really are stupid. You almost died!_

Sniffing pitifully in her hand, Byul-yi craves the solitude of her room like no other. She can’t even trust herself to have a few drinks to calm her nerves or roam the city on foot! She starts to believe how safer and better it would be should she just remain in her cramped apartment and only go out for the necessities. No wild nights, no bars, and definitely no free roaming the streets at night.

Then a female voice makes her stop, followed by a concerned, “Do you need a ride?”

Byul-yi’s heard that voice before, but…it can’t be. She hasn’t seen her in years.


	9. HYEJIN (Night)

When people think of Hong Kong, they think of this shining city full of sights and sounds, but Hyejin personally believes that such a flashy image brings out the feeling of bitter loneliness even more. She snips off the last vibrant piece from the sunflower bouquet, dumps all the soon-to-wither petals in a plastic cup, and plops down in one of the empty salon chairs as if the action has physically drained her. Her running out stunt had granted her some grueling overtime hours, her sole responsibility to look up, _and_ the empty threat of her pay being docked if she ever did that again.

Hyejin’s boss may have been intimidating in appearance, but he was all bark and no bite. Despite a lack of true professional hair care, she was still the best and most humble hairdresser the shop had. It would be on them if they fired her. Not like she would care. She’s been wanting to get herself fired for weeks.

Her auburn hair lies long and loose, obscuring the open back of her dress yet allowing glimpses of the dark honeyed skin beneath. Pink acrylic nails click on top of one another as her body goes still in the chair while her head peers up at the ceiling. She swears she hears male voices passing the salon.

 _That warm, raspy voice that night sent nerves prickling up Hyejin’s spine. His smile made the dark in the rest of the room grow a bit lighter. She would never grow tired of seeing those goofy dimples on those priceless lips._ _Her mind spiraled out of control while his touch lingered on her skin, branding her with a simple mark._

An almost melancholic blue-green lighting colors the room, but Hyejin but could care less. So long as it’s an empty place to think, she doesn’t give a damn if the room were purple or orange or even a parking garage. She loves her own space.

_To call it love would be a mockery of her heart, a symbol of her dying innocence. But every word, every promise, every tease and flirtation invaded her mind like weeds seeking a weakness to leech off of. They wrapped Hyejin in a blanket of security and comfort, consuming her entire being in the heat of lust._

She would always remember that night in a soft, painful haze. The night that taught her the difference between love and infatuation. Love is unconditional, a commitment. It couldn’t be perfect but it could be whole, bringing forth all the missing pieces you never knew were lost. It could have a steady and forgiving balance with genuine words of the heart, or you didn’t speak because, in your own way, you were already communicating.

_The world stopped spinning as he leaned in with promise. Hyejin’s stomach turned over and her mind raced to places she didn’t know it could go. In that split second before his touch, every nerve in her body was electrified with the anticipation of being together in a way that was more than words._

Infatuation? It’s a phase, a limited craze over someone. Your mind twists, tangles and dips it into a sensation that you truly want to believe is love when it could be hormones on fire or something less tame, like admiration or respect.

_Hyejin hoped he felt the same, that what they were doing was something he wanted, that he’d keep her and wanted her to keep him. Extending a moment she never wanted to end._

All at once the frustration, disbelief, sadness and now awareness that Hyejin had just been a bounced around infatuation rather than a solid lover overwhelms her, and the silent tears flow down her face faster than she can stop them. As much as she tries to hold it in, she knows she can’t break quietly and doesn’t. Every muscle and fiber screams in unison, upset from the using and losing, the second and third chances, the heat and hate.

The hysterical crying is interrupted by Hyejin’s need to draw breath, and she pitifully stares into the mirror, the glass a blur of grays and blues and greens. All she can tell from her reflection is that she does not look pretty. Her eyes are swollen and stained with mascara, she’s unable to speak, and clumps of tears roll down her cheeks and off her pouting lips.

Slowly the fatigue of letting everything out after the long journey seeps out of Hyejin’s system as something foreign yet welcoming trickles in to replace her broken heart. Her cheekbones glint beneath the lights when those lips plump with gloss and vibrant with a dimpled smile decorate her features, and she lets out a laugh at how sorry she looks.

She goes to clean off her face when an object glints up at her from a half closed drawer. Blotting off the makeup and quickly blowing her nose, Hyejin fishes out a single cassette tape with the Chinese characters “風花” neatly printed in Sharpie on a piece of white tape. One eyebrow limply arches as she sits back down to pop the sucker in the slot of the salon’s single and ancient pink radio.

An unexpected melody skips around the room, sending Hyejin’s back straight up like she’s been pinched. Nights lately have obviously not been easy on her, what with the seven-month split of her and her boyfriend. And though she swore ‘never again’, the tone of the wordless song gets her remembering what he would always say on someone’s birthday, early in the morning, during dates, or over the phone:

“Today, the gift I want from you is your wonderful smile.”

It was his loss he would never see that precious and contagious treasure on such a beautiful girl ever again.

Hyejin pushes away from the radio and jumps up, catching her reflection for a split second before spinning around the room, arms high to the sky and hair whooshing over her shoulders. She throws middle fingers, loving gestures, and peace signs at imaginary people in time with the lively tempo as if it’s inviting her to feel the presence of herself.

Tonight Hyejin’s heart wants out, to be free and wild on the streets. The longer she dances, the brighter the colors glint against the random blue shades she finds and puts on. The wider her hops and skips get, the louder the noises grow in her ear.

She snatches up the cup of flowers and dumps them on the floor, watching smugly as the tiny petals scatter around her see-through heels. Like they aren’t in a bad position enough, Hyejin squashes them all, pockets the tape in her evening coat, and locks up the shop like nothing out of the ordinary happened. She hails a cab, suddenly winded and sweaty from the excitement that left her body, yet it remains in her hard pounding heart and makes her glow on the outside even under the harsh lighting of the city.

Hyejin scales the steps of her apartment two at a time and practically throws her body inside, seeking out her bedroom. Immediately she strips off her salon garb and staggers into the bathroom with one heel kicked off, impatiently unlocking her phone for her shower playlist she’s abandoned for some time now. She is dancing once more, blasting old-but-gold bops so loud she swears she may go deaf and belting out unnecessary notes she knows the neighbors can hear from both above and below her.

Everything is a blur, but Hyejin recognizes how she’s switched her bra for a push-up and dresses classy but sassy in a tiger orange turtleneck and high-waisted jeans that do wonders showing off her great thighs and greater ass. Whatever ruined makeup clung to her is now reapplied in sexier shades, and she sweeps her hair into a fancy up-do. She presses a damp kiss to the bathroom mirror, grabs the necessities she’ll need, and pushes a pair of shades above her head while fresh platform heels thump in a high rhythm of certainty.

Hyejin won’t let some measly breakup ruin her carefree night being alone.


	10. YONGSUN (Night)

Yongsun knows she’s older than she appears. Slim and five-foot-two, brown hair framing a heart-shaped face, expressive dark eyes and a tiny pink mouth, she can easily pass for sixteen. Possibly younger. But in truth, while she may be childlike in proportions, she is clearly an adult and closer to twenty-nine. She doesn’t want to be cute. Wasn’t fifteen years of that enough?

Now Yongsun craves to be loud and extroverted, to sculpt a sexiness and earn the attention that goes with it.

_First foundation, then the mascara. I’ll darken my eyebrows too._

Yongsun places a solid black line around the frame of her eyes, slowly blending colors in a perfect combination that will complement her complexion and outfit − a brilliant apple-red sweetheart neck top suggestively pushing up her breasts and matching bootcut pants. She decides she’ll match up further with some black heels, completing the look in an elegant but feminine flourish.

_I’ve always been quite the beauty, but seeing me up close will only reinforce the truth._

Her skin is brushed with highlights and blush to bring out the smooth bone structure in her cheeks − her favorite of her Korean traits − and her hair lies unadorned in more waves than curls down the left side of her shoulder. All that’s needed is a spicy little something on her lips that scream ‘kissable’ and ‘fierce.’

_Sit close to me and you’ll see. Rosy cheeks, the soft cushion of my lips…_

Yongsun follows her reflection intensely while applying lipstick, eyes glazed in an enigmatic manner under the two lamps in the room and tinting the original shade to one that reminds her of dampened soil in the summertime.

 _Color never looked so beautiful on a woman_ , her thoughts sing. Nothing so pretty could truly harm her; one cute face, a hair flip here and there, and some cleavage could get her anything and anyone.

Wasn’t that right?

When Yongsun curves the painted stick back around, she pauses and narrows her eyes like something’s wrong. That can’t be, she has done everything right. She looks right, smells right, she’s dressed right… And yet there’s just something out of sync with it all.

Perhaps her eyeliner is too long or her nose contour is too low, or the overall makeup is just too thick. She leans forward and perks her lips for the mirror, and it’s in that moment when even her smile seems made up and she doesn’t appear conventionally beautiful. Is she trying too hard?

 _Why?_ Why should it matter? Yongsun wants to laugh, feel good, and have a good time tonight. **_Why?_** Why should it have to be so time consuming and difficult to look her best? She wants to feel cool, more comfortable and calm strutting out on the streets with her soft curves, where every step she takes boosts her confidence.

That is until she hears those comments again.

“She needs to give a message of gratitude towards her makeup artist.”

“So she’s been making transformations all this time…”

“All this time, I was fooled by her makeup.”

“I can’t tell who she is.”

With breakneck speed, half of what Yongsun put on her face clatters to the floor when her elbow knocks into them after the back of her hand smears off a good deal of the settling lipstick.

“Why can’t I be fucking beautiful!”

The chilling screech rattles her vocal cords and startles her, the creases under her brows lifting in slow shock at what she’s done. A familiar heat stabs the corners of her eyes, those features of hers no longer beautiful but simply haunting the longer she stares.

_It was one of those baby blue sky days, not the psychedelic candy blue or the washed out gray of winter mornings. On that fine day Yongsun strolled down the street under a sun that warmed her skin, smiling at the trashy music coming from the radio from an opened window car. She never learned._

_“Whoa, who are you? Your makeup looks so good today.”_

_The startled driver displayed about fifty emotions at once before settling for a deadpanned look. “My makeup… Get in the car.”_

_“Okay.”_

Yongsun hates how she can never make people relax and be happy with what they have. Why should she be at fault for being slimmer than most women? Did she have to be berated for having a lighter voice and darker eyes than most of the girls back in high school?

_Gazing straight ahead only half aware of the colored blur of a world outside, the pattern of traffic lights welcomed the arrival of a humble new season in Seoul, and for once it wasn’t with a deluge of rain._

_“You have long arms. Another Sunday selfie?”_

_A dimple sprung on Yongsun’s cheeks that attempted to be playfully smug. “Right now I’m stretching my arm to make my face look thinner.”_

_The eye roll to anyone else could have been taken as distasteful or maybe even jealousy, but really her friend was proud she found a part of herself comfortable. “You’re crazy.”_

Somewhere inside she can acknowledge how she has always wanted her body to be picture perfect on her own accord, but then letting unrestrained negativity and jealousy rule how she walks, talks, and looks for nearly three decades of her life?

_“Have you held a camera before? It’s kind of hard to record with a selfie camera.”_

_“It’s so… Ooh, this is a great angle, right?”_

_“Yeah, a great angle. You look pretty in this angle. Isn’t my sister gorgeous?” Yongsun captured the moment to look at later right when her friend burst into embarrassed laughter. Her eyes scrunched in unfiltered bliss and her lips curled out, looking bright and free. **There is never a time where she looks at her worst, unlike me** , the young Korean thought on loop. “She took all the good genes; a small face, big eyes… All the good stuff! I’m pitiful.” _

_“No, no, if I had to say something good about you, I’d say I like you.”_

Yongsun has never wanted to wrap men around her finger and make every single girl envious. That just wasn’t her. She has never wanted to use her makeup as war paint or sexuality as a means of self-expression. She thinks she’s free to express herself through other means, like writing, singing, _smiling_. Right?

_“You **just** like me? Aish, you really know what to say in front of the camera.” _

_“I think it’s a great answer. I have someone to rely on, to laugh and cry with. People always go to you, ‘you’re so pretty, I wanna be your friend, I bet you’ve got lots of friends and a boyfriend.’ You’ve seen my ugly and pretty sides, my angry and happy sides. I never feel funny or uncomfortable. That’s why I like you; you make my life easier.”_

_“I call you, like, once a month. Doesn’t that piss you off?”_

_“Life gets busy. Why should I give you shit if you need to disappear for a whole year to find yourself again? You know I love you.”_

_“I love you three thousand, Byul-yi. Now drive like you mean it and let’s eat!”_

Seeing her again, possibly drunk, staggering, and lost in a big city, what could have been going through her mind? Was she hurt, and who hurt her? Maybe she was scared or upset, but why? Yongsun doesn’t know how to handle the young girl returning out of the blue. Usually it was the opposite; the former would get those unneeded spams of tension and uneasiness through school days despite being lathered with compliment after compliment, smile by smile. She would need time to balance, and Byul-yi would never take it out on her if it took five hours or five days. She was willing to wait for her old Yongsun to come back, better than ever.

Now it has been a number of years since Yongsun steadily heard from the skinny Korean, so what did that mean? A good sign? A bad omen? Rekindled friendship? Nothing at all?

Yongsun recalls one of the things Byul drilled into her again and again, and it’s that she is indeed a good girl with enough love in her heart for everyone she looks at – including the one in the mirror. There was no need to cling to the illusion of beauty forever and pretend she wasn’t marching forward, especially at a time like this. Her friend needed her in that black-and-white world. She _will_ laugh, feel good, and have a good time tonight. She _will_ feel cool, more comfortable and calm strutting out on the streets with her soft curves, where every step she takes boosts her confidence.

Yongsun would have no more gloomy days, starting now.


	11. WHEEIN (Night)

Nestled in her usual place in bed, cozy with a blanket but of course having no intentions of sleeping soon, Wheein’s eyes almost turn square glued to the tiny screen of her laptop. A rerun of a K-Drama plays with the volume turned up so loud the windows shake. She doesn’t know when or why she started watching it. She hasn’t laughed when she was supposed to, doesn’t feel any tension during the drama, and she can barely follow the plot. She just sits in silence, a bag of chips lying beside her until, to her utter disappointment, there’s nothing left.

The draining battery of her cordless laptop soon shuts off, but Wheein’s too lazy to plug it in and instead brushes crumbs off her blanket, the tiny food grains reminding her to feed her fish. No sooner does she dip the feeder over the water than a colorful flurry swims at attention. Each fish race to gobble the meal first while the more patient ones hang back. Wheein rewards those who wait and sits on her knees to watch, tracing the glass and numbly tapping it with her thinnest nail so she won’t spook them.

_Under all that unconditional love, relief, and missing her only daughter was a smidge of distress for not having been in contact for what felt like ten thousand years. Wheein could tell as she wiped her eyes in order to take in the interior. She desperately wanted her mom to yell at her, maybe throw something or refuse to make her lunch when she led her through the family room, excitedly pointing out the furniture that stayed or got replaced, asking her if she remembered coloring in the dining room or sliding down the banister on rainy afternoons._

Something plastic nudges her toe, and she swears she thought she’d thrown them out a long time ago. Wheein bends over to pick up an impressive replica of spring flowers she thought once upon a time would spruce up her dreary room, maybe calm her whenever she couldn’t fall asleep.

_The smells of dryer sheets, the sights of the vintage furniture, and a nostalgic dagger to the heart after hearing a faint song she danced to nonstop in the fields tempted Wheein to get on her knees and beg her own mother to scream at the top of her lungs:_

_“You up and left and didn’t tell me why! What kind of daughter does that? You should know better!”_

She wants nothing to do with flowers for as long as she lives and plops the magenta blossoms in the middle of her fish tank, the abrupt addition startling the scaly school. Wheein tosses herself on the pigsty she calls a bed, remembering with a painful knot in her stomach how challenging it had been to scrounge up savings to get her off that lumpy futon. Botched up sleeping schedules from insomnia plus a couch that gave out free cricks for the neck equaled a hell she wouldn’t wish on her worst enemy.

_“Mom, why did you stop? What happened?”_

_The second hug was both expected and unexpected. Those familiar hands caressing and combing through her tangled short ’do dissolved the hollow feeling in Wheein’s throat._

_“I want to take things slow, wake up if I’m truly dreaming. But I don’t think I am and that makes me happy. Wheein, I know it seems we’ve lost our way and life just seems worse than hell itself, but I want you to know that whatever it takes, I **will** make sure my daughter and her future soars. You don’t need to hide or be scared anymore. You’re home.”_

_You should have yelled_ , Wheein thinks, warm tears sticking to her face. _You should have told me how wrong I was to leave you and given me lashings, not love. Tell me how you really feel Mom._

She traces the abrasive bedsheets, eyes slowly wandering around the tiny room that had been her home away from two homes, and can’t help feeling some type of way. What was it? Loneliness? Pity?

“I am so tired,” a voice Wheein is sure is hers grumbles out, and the world around her fizzles into an inky blackness.

Scattered flashes of her mother, middle school, and transitions from being a little girl to a skittish young lady cartwheel across the tilt-a-whirl of her mind. Every color that could tumble from a box of pastels polishes her world anew, and smells of glowing embers of a bonfire soothe her nose. Tumbling feathered crystals in their chaotic flight to form a blanket could not be more orderly over Wheein’s skin. Then, in a beautiful transition, nature’s graffiti decorates her from head to toe.

Light yellow primroses, breathtaking blue hydrangeas, small snow white chrysanthemums, and deep red chocolate cosmos. Flowers, four lovely kinds in full bloom with silky petals to the touch.

When Wheein opens her eyes, refreshing rays of both warmth and coolness coat her like in her flower shower dream. Her phone proudly informs her how seven to eight hours have passed, and the usual red-orange ambiance of the room congratulates her power nap rather than conflicts her on whether it was 3:00 p.m. or 3:00 a.m. She still takes waking slow and unlatches the window for some fresh air, the sight it offers as she props her head out taking her breath away.

Skylines in their majestic glory appear with startling beauty beneath the indigo patch, not one cloud loitering the star-speckled sky. Rows of skyscrapers and high-rises stretch around her, their windows raging with hot glows from the inside indulging in strobing raves or private concerts. A full moon hovers at the hem of the illuminated cityscape, rivaling the red winking lights of distant phone and radio towers. Almost like a milky filter, the glares of a few lights soften the hard lines of faraway buildings, blending well with the orange glow of street lamps.

Wheein grins, amazed at the view laid out for her, but what she shows on the outside doesn’t adequately reflect what she feels on the inside. It takes a moment or two for the emotions to sink it, everything reaching and touching her in an overwhelming blotch of chaos. She can tell the grin is stretching, wider and wider, until her eyebrows reach for the sky and she’s up and moving.

She may have clawed her way out of a dismal tunnel for now, but she knows it’ll take more than light memories and a day full of activity miraculously tiring her out to escape the grayed spectrum she fell in way, way back. Sleepless nights would make their comeback; loud music in her earbuds, in her car and in her room would be her second medicine some day; and events of chaotic good and bad – hell, just chaos – would eagerly jump at the opportunity to bring her down.

For now though, Wheein deserves to treat herself. It was a good night with the wind blowing.


	12. BYUL-YI (Night)

“ _Running wild, lost control. Running wild, mighty bold._ _Feelin’ gay, reckless too. Carefree mind all the time, never blue._ ”

Byul-yi readjusts the needle on the record player to start from the beginning, the song not quite reaching her from one, the language barrier and two, her brain is on 5% and can’t properly charge. In the dimness of her studio apartment, with curtains drawn and waiting for the painkillers to do their job, her mind refuses to shut up and reprimands her from nearly being totaled on the streets.

_Staggering around like a sorry drunk, hands clamped to bushy dark hair, bright lights, her heart nearly seizing up, the driver hopping in anger, her flushed and mottled face, wanting to cry off all her makeup…_

It was embarrassing. Rethinking it makes Byul-yi want to pace the room, not lie down or relax like she had intended to. One eye waters on the painful side of a headache, and her nose starts to run. She isn’t sure if it’s a side effect of the pill or her body’s way to further torment her, but she doesn’t welcome it either way and slouches in an old and rickety dining chair, kneading out the ache in between her eyes.

_“My real boyfriend is here with me for our Sunday date. We always pig out, but I’m gonna take off my lipstick and eat a lot.”_

_Byul-yi eyed the phone camera warily as it focused on her like invasive paparazzi lenses. “I knew we were going to eat, so I didn’t wear any lipstick.”_

_Yongsun’s laugh was the prettiest thing Byul loved hearing, and she set down her phone to grab a napkin. “You win.”_

Byul-yi sighs, the headache only worsening at the memory and her one eye overflowing in unnecessary tears that she has to find something to wipe off the heavy mascara anchoring down her lashes. She watches herself in the mirror, wondering where Yongsun may be at this time. Home perhaps? Out at a club? Having a good dinner? Wherever she was, it had to have been better than being cooped up in between four depressing walls.

_Byul smiled and stirred the clump of ice in her Coke as Yongsun removed her signature color from her cute, small lips. She always wondered if the girl knew that whenever she went natural − and she meant **natural** , not that nude makeup shit − it drove her crazy in a good way. She looked relaxed, unbothered, and exactly her age when not blotted in contour or highlighting her eyebrows._

_She thought Yongsun had gone completely makeup-free one time, but one time only. She’d fallen under the weather and had little energy to “put on a gorgeous face”_ _, which resulted in 99% of malicious comments at school and that 1% of good vibes from her personal Byul-yi cheerleader. It hadn’t been enough._

_Yongsun had called her mother to pick her up and she had switched her accounts to private._

Byul-yi throws a barely-together blanket over her lap, coercing the night to be good to her and trying to smooth talk the lights at some point to find solace in them, but when dark consume, sleep eludes and it appears it has divorced itself from her. Her thoughts and memories seem to get clearer the further she delves into them to distract her, but it only lasts for a while as she fights to take control of the lethargy slithering in and out of her system.

God, she’s never been this tired. Or lonely. And alone.

_“This is what my masterpiece looks like. Ooh, doesn’t it look yummy?”_

_“It’s hot, it’s **hot**.”_

_“Okay, but this is just what it looks like.” Yongsun pocketed her phone for good and separated her chopsticks. “Eat up, I made most of it come true.”_

_Their platters were hearty dishes filled with wild mushrooms or spicy concoctions, and their sides held mixed greens, savory fruit and nuts, and something sprinkled in parmesan cheese. There was shrimp and octopus saturated in sweet sauces and a smoking dessert that promised a delightful taste by its sight alone._

_“How can we eat all this stuff and not get fat?” Byul joked around a mouthful of both bitter and hot pasta._

_Yongsun looked like a chipmunk trying not to choke. Her laugh was a bit distorted by the massive amount of shrimp she stuffed in her cheeks, but it just made her look all the more cuter._

_“We can get coffee and walk after this,” she suggested, reaching across to pick off Byul-yi’s plate._

_“No, I want shaved ice.”_

_“Coffee and shaved ice?”_

_Byul-yi winked, snatching the food when it fell off Yongsun’s chopsticks and holding it up to her mouth. “You said it, not me.”_

A lingering haze of emotion sits somewhere in the back of Byul-yi’s mind, but it’s too vague and far away to reach. It floats in the lazy pool of her piled up memories, teasing her that she can’t touch it no matter how hard she tries. A webbed, hollow discomfort blossoms in an odd place in her chest, making it choppy and strange to breathe correctly even when she sits up or clears her head to focus on _in and out, in and out_.

One side of Byul’s worrisome mind assures her the painkillers are finally doing their job, but her conscience butts in to snap that it has to be something else trying to make her fall asleep with her raging emotions as the uncomfortable lullaby. The girl takes as many deep breaths as she can, many catching in her throat.

She’s crying. Why is she crying?

Byul-yi bites her lips so hard they actually start to bleed. She cradles her forehead in her hands, trying to block out the sounds with her palms, but nothing helps. The loneliness paralyzes her, the memories jump and kick her. She hates herself for not being able to hold tight to that strange but genuine friendship she once had with Yongsun. Her shining solar system, her smiling and bright sun.

_Byul kept her eyes arrow-straight as she closed the taxi door, her pulse swinging in and out of her chest like a yoyo. She was grateful for the ride but refused to look her way, even as her lips trembled and her shoulders tensed in heavy fatigue, unwilling to back down. Her dark determined gaze traced the blurry outlines of the passing city, darker lashes heavy with unshed tears and her hands clenched in shaking fists on her lap._

_Then, suddenly, hair brushed against her shoulder and her Yongsun was there, patting and rubbing her thigh._

_“I missed you,” she whispered._

_A lone tear stroked Byul’s cheek, but she still didn’t look at her. “I missed you, too.”_

Wet tracks slide down the thin face and drip from Byul-yi’s wobbling chin. She can never understand herself whenever she cries, hell, she can never understand her own emotions half the time. But in this rare moment, when her feelings swirl like ocean currents, deep and strong, something has to change.

Byul-yi won’t let comforting herself become all of her responsibility.


	13. only these four flowers are so beautiful

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A special thanks to those readers who've left me lovely comments and to those who've read this Mamamoo story and gave it love. I know when I first posted this story that I said there would be a bonus chapter, but I've been plenty busy with so much that I didn't want to leave this story cold. So, if you're reading this, Chapter 13 is the *last* chapter of this story.
> 
> Sorry about the long wait for updates, but I hoped you enjoyed my very first Mamamoo fic! 💐

In the velveted darkness draped over Hong Kong, whether man made or from the determination of nature, there are lights. They act as a sort of promise that even when people yearn for the might of the sun again, there will be something they can see to guide them through another twilight. After all, you relied on the sky to let you know it wasn’t a monochromatic world by day.

At night, it was beautiful in its own way.

Like the heat of an afternoon misplaced in November, the intensity of city folk spreads. Some are off to see a movie or relax in a lounge downtown. Along the undisputed perfumes of the urban hub, the hustle and bustle doesn’t brake; in neighboring skylines comes music of carefree laughter and unbothered nerves, and over by the botanical gardens echo promises of late night playfulness and harmless fun.

In a serenade of black, everything is the choir. But sometimes eyes needed music, and the darker the night the sweeter the song.

Passion turns Hyejin’s eyes into a crackling fire, snapping a message under the muted colors of the bottles that sure she can cry, but she’ll never let someone take her true self from her ever again. As the night goes on, she figures she’ll grow more comfortable in the sorry scattered pool of patrons, intoxicated by pint glasses rather than the unique moments she had looked forward to.

The tiniest ink-colored pair with the warmest gaze that could invite you over conflicts with the tight smile silently begging to be left alone as Yongsun silently downs her poison, wanting to melt into the air and escape as easily as smoke. She keeps her head down from the age-speckled lights and opens her mouth only to drink, not give in to the cravings to be loud and extroverted, to sculpt a sexiness and earn the attention that goes with it like she had longed for.

The glitter that finds every spark of light cannot find one spark of liveliness in those two spots of brown as Wheein lazily swirls a shot glass to keep entertainment high and socializing low. Her thoughts are silenced by a wall built from the three before her that not even the rusty radio could urge a louder volume from them.

Byul-yi remembers her wishes to blend into the vibe of those she considered her friends all those years ago, to soak in the laughter and smiles and to enjoy one night of genuine fun for herself. But in reality, she wants nothing more than to be in a pub swirling with sharp scents of tequila over a jangle of voices where her social awkwardness could be lost in the hubbub and din − not broadcasted in the loud silence in front of three strangers.

It’s a bar, yet the girls attempt to be as alien as possible. They drink, hoping their answers lie at the bottom of the glass and then the bottom of the bottle, and then the next bottle and the next. With so many glasses of amber and clear spirits though, there are no pink cheeks, no one slumped over the table or flashing unsober grins. The drinks pile up as confidence slopes, and no one makes a move to reach for any more. No words exchange between the four, inverting the already uneasy atmosphere.

Byul-yi bites her lip to hold down a cough when the buzz kicks the back of her throat, and it’s hard enough to try and settle with the silence that it works against her. Her nose burns, and spots in her left eye cloud up again. She actually cradles her forehead in her hands, once again trying to block out the sounds with her palms, but nothing helps and she looks insane.

Hyejin views this with less animosity, humming behind the liquor she raises to her lips. Wheein startles easily and bites her lip too, aware the others saw her jump. Yongsun is the only girl that lacks a reaction and the last one Byul expects to flaunt an unbothered response. Her color infused cheeks furiously mark her social incompetence the longer she tries to force herself to be quiet. The heat from the alcohol spreads to her eyes, and she can feel all her oddities scribbling across her face.

She wants to go home. Going out was a mistake.

“We can get coffee and walk after this.”

Byul-yi’s head whips up, her pulse a mile a minute.

“You want shaved ice instead?” Yongsun continues, swirling her half-melted ice in her drink and watching it become watered down.

Hyejin raises a perfectly plucked eyebrow, shifting her hairline of freshly washed curls. “Coffee and shaved ice?” She spits out the words as if the combination makes her stomach ache.

“You said it, not me,” Yongsun mutters behind the glass, hiding a smirk Byul-yi knows is for her.

“Are you drunk?” Hyejin doesn’t snap the words, but she sounds annoyed for the still atmosphere to be broken by fragmented trails of thought.

“If I was, would you get me a taxi?”

“I don’t even know you.”

“I wasn’t talking to you.”

Byul-yi’s eyes are everywhere but on the table. She’s seen Yongsun do this to others before back in school, bringing up memories to use against them at the worst possible times to make them feel like shit, but she thought their bond was immune. She’s never been afraid of the older woman’s anger when it came as fire, for that burnt hot and fast. But Byul-yi is deathly afraid of her ice.

Hyejin glances between the odd stare-off, blinking slow. “You know each other?” Two nods. “Could you please tell her to watch what she drinks before she starts blabbing more? She could say something to the wrong person.”

Yongsun scoffs and pushes her glass out. “You can just tell me yourself. I just planned on going out, drinking and dancing. I didn’t plan on making friends with you.”

“Sounds like you made plans to get a pop in the mouth,” Hyejin warns coolly, her stare like a knife to the ribs. “Can you please just keep quiet?”

The only sound given back is from Wheein scratching at the back of her head, her own single way of expressing the discomfort she’s in surrounded by such an odd bunch. Hell, if they had a fifth member, they wouldn’t be too far off from The Breakfast Club. But unlike the 80s movie, there was no cutting to the good bits; the girls needed to actually communicate if they wanted to save their night and leave with some sanity and cheer.

“How long have you been here?”

And it’s a wonder that Byul-yi is the first to break the ice.

Yongsun shrugs. “Figured I’d take a vacation. What about you?”

Byul-yi shrugs, too. “Kind of the same thing.”

“Been thinking of going to school here?”

“Kind of.”

Yongsun taps the side of her drink, eyes immediately flitting to the quiet head-scratching brunette. “Do you go to school here?”

“Live here,” Wheein murmurs without making eye contact.

“ _Ah_ , can you teach me better Cantonese?” Hyejin suddenly interjects, taking a swig from her drink. “I can’t pronounce for shit.”

“Well, no, I misspoke. I wasn’t actually born here, but my mom has a temporary house in the countryside. She and I go there on breaks and holidays sometimes, but we decided we’d live here. I-in Hong Kong. Indefinitely.”

“Is she a single mother?” Yongsun asks.

“She is now.”

Byul tilts her head. “Is your father not in the picture?”

“I’d rather not talk about him.”

“Oh, I-I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to… I am so sorry.”

“He’s not dead, but he’s dead to me. My heart’s already lost the love for him, and I don’t care what happens to that man.”

Hyejin finishes the rest of her drink, keeping her stare on the half-melted ice cubes gleaming under the ceiling lights. “Words I can kind of drink to,” she mutters, her jaw slack at an uncomfortable angle. “Dated this guy − _super_ sweet to me − for about seven months. He was my King, but I was his Fool. He just tore a hole in me, day by day, and I was dumb enough to take the bait. He had the nerve to send me…” Her bitter chuckle sounds choked up and sad. “Never thought I’d hear myself cry like that.”

Yongsun looks forward with a knowing expression and feebly presses her hand over the tanned drinker as if both hadn’t stirred up the tension earlier. “He really broke you?”

“I loved him.” A bottle passes from hand to hand, a soft universal consolation that makes a minuscule smile twitch in Hyejin’s dimpled cheeks. “Now I’m trying to go steady with what’s left of me and treat myself. It’s the least I can do.”

“I’m trying to be good to myself, too.” Byul-li stares at her shoes, hiding them under her pants leg. She closes her eyes only to see those three serpent, full of judgement, full of delight, no trace of caring. How her cheeks burn hot, how the sight had egged them on − her differences, their shot in the arm. “God, I try so damn hard and still feel lonely.”

Yongsun’s hand held hers tight, and something boldly whispers to Byul that she’s probably wanted more of a bond for forever, or maybe that Byul herself has wanted more of a bond for the longest. Though now, in the lights, she can honestly guess that they are both in need of something strong after so much time apart. Yongsun’s eyes look special, lighter than Byul-yi thought they might be. If it were anyone else, she would drop her gaze, but with Yongsun she’s drawn in closer.

Yongsun then says what Byul needs to hear paired in a long lost hug:

“We’re ok now, you and me. I’m here for you. Okay?”

Byul-yi nods, taking in every moment for memory, knowing it’s the medication she needs to survive - even if it’s just for the next few hours. The dosage ups itself to maybe half a day when Wheein and Hyejin hesitantly put their hands over Byul’s, as well.

“My name’s Hyejin. If we’re opening up, we might as well share a name with a good face.”

Byul smiles, a tender look in her eyes gleaming. “My name’s Moon Byul-yi. You can all call me Byul, if you want.”

“Yongsun.”

“I’m Wheein. Nice to meet you girls.”

Now it floats everywhere; the not so awkward silence, the stinging but blunt air, the allusion and consciousness of company. It brings a smile into the matching brown eyes. It’s a wonder why others insist all problems can be solved with flowers. They still die, yet they will bloom anew. Then again, their beauty can be taken for granted - just like those who took the four hearts and souls for granted.

“We’re not all friends, but let’s not kill each other and just get drunk together,” Yongsun declares.

It’s finally a bar after the toast.

Hyejin, Yongsun, Wheein and Byul-yi drink, not caring if their answers don’t lie at the bottom of the glass or the bottom of the bottle, or the next bottle or the next. With so many glasses of amber and clear spirits, pink cheeks glow, Yongsun slumps over the table and Wheein and Hyejin flash unsober grins. Byul-yi piles the drinks up as her confidence evens out, and no one makes a move for the door.

No sober words exchange between the four, stretching the buzzed atmosphere into the a.m. Yongsun jumps on the table, Wheein downs another shot, Hyejin dances like nobody’s watching, Byul laughs deep down in her belly. A carefree night being alone sounds fun and self-caring, but you would have no more gloomy days on a good night, with the wind blowing, when comforting yourself no longer becomes all of your responsibility.

The girls continue their party out to the streets. They know they’re alive, they’re real, and reality is _perfect_. They leave arm in arm, wobbling down the lamp-lit alley to hail a cab under the serenade of black.


End file.
